Laura,
Best wishes and prayers for a successful surgery. We found that the day after surgery wasn't so bad but the next 3 were tough. She did have good moments but there were many that were very stressful on us and worse on her. She had surgery on Monday, and Wednesday they took out the catheter, pulled off the dressing, removed her incision drain, removed an IV (she had several), etc. Wednesday was awful. They also took her off the morphine pump, on Wednesday, I think, and it was hard to switch to oral medication and get the right dosage to handle the pain. Luckily there were only a few times that the pain got really bad and they gave her a morphine through her IV immediately and within 10 or 15 minutes, she settled down.
Now that we are at home the pain is pretty much under control but she can tell when the 4 hours is up....she starts asking "is it time?" I set an alarm and get up in the night every 4 hours to give her medicine, even if she's not awake, I wake her up. Her appetite is returning, although the pain medication makes her a little nauseous. She asked for a Chick-fil-A sandwich last night and we ran out and got her one. She ate more than half. She read a magazine this morning and is finally watching a little TV.
She didn't want any sounds at the hospital. She didn't want us to talk to her or to each other and our cell phones rang constantly. We finally silenced them and would go in the hall to talk to everybody. She requested no visitors so we just talked with all her visitors in the hall. We loved having people come by but she just wasn't up to it. Our nurse the first two nights was awesome and she put a note on the door saying 10 minute limit on all visits. She said she really shouldn't have visitors at all given the seriousness of this surgery so we just got the word out that it's better to wait until she's up for it plus she didn't even want to see her best friends and still hasn't said they could come yet.
One more thing, she had some of the wildest dreams while on morphine and we started writing them down. She now laughs so hard when we tell her about them.
Sorry I rambled so long. Prayers to your daughter and her family. This forum has been great and can usually answer any question you have.
Cheryl
Best wishes and prayers for a successful surgery. We found that the day after surgery wasn't so bad but the next 3 were tough. She did have good moments but there were many that were very stressful on us and worse on her. She had surgery on Monday, and Wednesday they took out the catheter, pulled off the dressing, removed her incision drain, removed an IV (she had several), etc. Wednesday was awful. They also took her off the morphine pump, on Wednesday, I think, and it was hard to switch to oral medication and get the right dosage to handle the pain. Luckily there were only a few times that the pain got really bad and they gave her a morphine through her IV immediately and within 10 or 15 minutes, she settled down.
Now that we are at home the pain is pretty much under control but she can tell when the 4 hours is up....she starts asking "is it time?" I set an alarm and get up in the night every 4 hours to give her medicine, even if she's not awake, I wake her up. Her appetite is returning, although the pain medication makes her a little nauseous. She asked for a Chick-fil-A sandwich last night and we ran out and got her one. She ate more than half. She read a magazine this morning and is finally watching a little TV.
She didn't want any sounds at the hospital. She didn't want us to talk to her or to each other and our cell phones rang constantly. We finally silenced them and would go in the hall to talk to everybody. She requested no visitors so we just talked with all her visitors in the hall. We loved having people come by but she just wasn't up to it. Our nurse the first two nights was awesome and she put a note on the door saying 10 minute limit on all visits. She said she really shouldn't have visitors at all given the seriousness of this surgery so we just got the word out that it's better to wait until she's up for it plus she didn't even want to see her best friends and still hasn't said they could come yet.
One more thing, she had some of the wildest dreams while on morphine and we started writing them down. She now laughs so hard when we tell her about them.
Sorry I rambled so long. Prayers to your daughter and her family. This forum has been great and can usually answer any question you have.
Cheryl
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